Staff Engineer - vSphere Kubernetes Service

Broadcom•San Diego, CA

About The Position

The Problem We’re Solving Enterprises want to run Kubernetes at scale — without becoming Kubernetes experts. Today, many Broadcom customers run mission-critical workloads on vSphere, but adopting Kubernetes often means: Operating a second control plane Stitching together storage, networking, identity, and lifecycle tooling Carrying ongoing operational and upgrade risk This complexity slows adoption and creates reliability issues at scale. Our mission: make Kubernetes boring and effectively disappear for enterprise operators — by embedding it directly into the vSphere control plane and making it behave like a first-class infrastructure primitive. The Role: Staff Engineer, vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) You’ll join the VKS team, responsible for the Kubernetes control plane that is built into VMware Cloud Foundation. Your job is to design and build a distributed management system that: Runs Kubernetes control planes reliably across thousands of enterprise environments Manages the full lifecycle of Kubernetes workload clusters Integrates deeply with storage, networking, identity, and VM infrastructure Preserves enterprise guarantees around availability, upgrades, and operability This is platform engineering at scale, with real production impact to 1000s of enterprise customers. What You’ll Actually Work On You will tackle problems like: How do we manage Kubernetes clusters as infrastructure, not pets? Designing control-plane workflows that create, upgrade, and heal clusters safely. How do we reconcile Kubernetes abstractions with vSphere primitives? Bridging containers and VMs without leaking complexity to operators. How do we build a control plane that survives real enterprise failure modes? Partial upgrades, split-brain scenarios, networking failures, and version skew. How do we test distributed systems rigorously? Building automated tests that validate correctness, upgrades, and resilience. Your Responsibilities Design and implement distributed systems in Go / C++ / Java Serve as a technical mentor and lead for a group of engineers, providing day-to-day technical direction and coaching to ensure successful project delivery. Drive and lead team processes and agile methodologies (sprint planning, execution, defect triages, etc.) to optimize quality and velocity for their assigned work. Own the complete Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for assigned technical areas, including design, implementation, and quality assurance. Work with Technical Leads (TLs) and architects to translate ambiguous, large-scale problems into clear technical designs and execution plans. Collaborate with Product Management and other engineering teams to manage technical dependencies, risks, and communications. Foster a culture of technical excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement. What Makes You a Strong Fit Hands-on experience building or operating Kubernetes-based systems. A deep understanding of the control plane architecture (API server, etcd, scheduler, controller-manager, etc.) and how they maintain the desired state is required. Experience extending the Kubernetes API by designing declarative APIs and implementing reconciliation loops. Knowledge of Linux internals (cgroups, namespaces, etc.) and container runtimes like containerd. Knowledge of Container Network Interfaces (CNI) and managing traffic through Ingress controllers and Service Meshes (Istio, Linkerd etc.). Knowledge in Container Storage Interface (CSI) and managing Persistent Volumes (PVs) and PVCs. Strong systems design fundamentals (consistency, availability, failure handling) Comfort debugging production issues across multiple layers Ability to work independently on complex problems and collaborate across teams Experience working in an Agile environment using Git-based workflows Bachelor's degree plus 8+ years of related experience or Master's degree and 6+ years of related experience Why This Role Is Interesting You’re leading the development of core infrastructure, not app-level glue. The problems are deeply technical and require strategic leadership to solve. Your work and your team's success directly affect enterprise production environments. You’ll help define how Kubernetes is delivered to some of the world’s largest companies. If you enjoy making complex systems feel simple, building platforms that other engineers don’t have to think about, and empowering your team to achieve ambitious goals, this leadership role is for you.

Requirements

Hands-on experience building or operating Kubernetes-based systems.
A deep understanding of the control plane architecture (API server, etcd, scheduler, controller-manager, etc.) and how they maintain the desired state is required.
Experience extending the Kubernetes API by designing declarative APIs and implementing reconciliation loops.
Knowledge of Linux internals (cgroups, namespaces, etc.) and container runtimes like containerd.
Knowledge of Container Network Interfaces (CNI) and managing traffic through Ingress controllers and Service Meshes (Istio, Linkerd etc.).
Knowledge in Container Storage Interface (CSI) and managing Persistent Volumes (PVs) and PVCs.
Strong systems design fundamentals (consistency, availability, failure handling)
Comfort debugging production issues across multiple layers
Ability to work independently on complex problems and collaborate across teams
Experience working in an Agile environment using Git-based workflows
Bachelor's degree plus 8+ years of related experience or Master's degree and 6+ years of related experience

Responsibilities

Design and implement distributed systems in Go / C++ / Java
Serve as a technical mentor and lead for a group of engineers, providing day-to-day technical direction and coaching to ensure successful project delivery.
Drive and lead team processes and agile methodologies (sprint planning, execution, defect triages, etc.) to optimize quality and velocity for their assigned work.
Own the complete Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for assigned technical areas, including design, implementation, and quality assurance.
Work with Technical Leads (TLs) and architects to translate ambiguous, large-scale problems into clear technical designs and execution plans.
Collaborate with Product Management and other engineering teams to manage technical dependencies, risks, and communications.
Foster a culture of technical excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.